Cigarettes
'A PROJECT SET ASIDE' "Cigarettes" is an incomplete record that was abandoned in April 2004 once the "May Tenth " project took off. The songs didn't have a genre specific theme, but rather a conceptual namesake theme where whatever mood the song took on would be morphed into some relevent metaphor that involved smoking cigarettes or the actions or situations that involve cigarettes. "For instance, "What a Drag" is not about taking a drag of a cigarette, but rather putting myself into the mind of a school child dealing with the problems of thinking and acting differently than the others." 'SHE SMOKED VIRGINIA SLIMS' Virginia Slims was a brand of cigarette that Dustin's mother smoked while they went on road trips together in his youth and "She Smoked Virginia Slims", which is also known as "Soda Pop" by some is a song that is attempted to capture the feeling and vibe of the open road with the FM synthesizers that were heard in a lot of the 80s music that was playing on the radio in the car during the trips. Phil Collins, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Rod Stewart, Paula Abdul, Jefferson Starship were regulars on the pop station Kiss 99 FM and Q97.9 . "Often when I hear music I visualize a music video in my head. When I was young and hadn't even seen Rod Stewart yet, for some reason I had assumed "Forever Young" was sung by a large black woman covered in gold. This was the music video I had pictured. My mother and I listened to VH1 a lot when we cleaned the house, I remember cleaning the outside of the upstairs windows to a version of VH1 that might not have started doing Pop-Up Video yet." 'JUST THE BEGINNING' The arpeggiated version of "Universe Miracle" that is heard on Cigarettes not only has the addition of drums and synth pad strings, but also an entirely new dramatic second part. "What is too bad is that that's always been a song that I could just play for someone on the piano if I had nothing better to play. One of my few songs that translate so well simply on just one person playing one instrument, but now with the second part it always feels like I'm playing half the song when I play it on the piano. When this song is played live, people will know. The piano part is just the beginning." 'CURRENTLY UNRELEASED' While the original files were not in any specific order, in 2011 Dustin re-arranged them with track numbers and added a cover image in case "Cigarettes" were to be released as is or re-mastered, either bundled with something else as an extra or as a companion for live versions of these songs. At the time of this writing, "Cigarettes" has not been officially released outside of Section Z. 'TRACK LIST' *01 "What a Drag" - 3:16 *02 "Maria Maria" - 0:40 *03 "Cancer (demo)" - 4:50 *04 "X Cigz (wip)" - 1:23 *05 "She Smoked Virginia Slims (instrumental) " - 4:00 *06 "Cancer Returns" - 1:01 *07 "Put Out" - 2:00 *08 "Ups and Downs" - 3:23 *09 "What Would God Think?" - 4:35 *10 "Universe Miracle (V4)" - 3:31 *11 "I'm Happy" - 3:00 Category:Unreleased Albums Category:Dustin Beyette